I have a DK2, I don't think I'll get a new headset until things settle down a bit and we have a clear understanding of the market.
There really aren't going to be many good games for a while, Elite:Dangerous is the only really polished option right now, you'll still need to buy some sort of controller when those are available.
I have a Razer Hydra, it's pretty awful, but it works for now to play a few games.

>>57134Perhaps in a few years when most of the kinks are worked out and the price comes down. I would like to see this as an option for handheld consoles with a smaller eyeglasses and earphones VR thingy.
Oculus Rift Creator Admits VR Is Still "Pretty Expensive, Relatively Primitive"
"I don't expect everyone to be interested in VR as it is today."
September 4, 2015 http://www.gamespot.com/articles/oculus-rift-creator-admits-vr-is-still-pretty-expe/1100-6430333/Virtual reality is no doubt an exciting technology, but it's not without its skeptics. The doubters--of which there are many--are right about some things, Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey says. The 22-year-old admits that the technology, as it exists today, is nothing more than a "pretty expensive, relatively primitive proof of concept." But he's sure that the promise of total immersion will one day be realized, perhaps without a clunky headset, too.

In a recent interview, we asked Luckey what he would say to someone who doubts the appeal of virtual reality. "First, I would have to ask them, 'Have you tried it?' If they haven't tried it, the only response would be, 'OK, we can't have meaningful discussion until you've tried it,'" he explained. "Then we are both on the same playing field. We both understand what we're talking about."

Mainstream VR is not something I feel compelled to adopt early. My 3570K and GTX680 couldn't handle it even if I wanted to.

Maybe after I've built my next computer, maybe some time later this year, instead of upgrading from 1080, I'll invest in VR instead. We'll have a less expensive, more refined next generation before 2016 is over with.

>>57140My friends got one of those "development kits". I wasn't really impressed with it. The image was funky, like when you look through one of those Viewmaster things, and the image perspective for each eye is slightly different to give it a "3d effect." They did get one FPS thing to sorta work, (I forget if it was a demo or what game it was) where it would display and looking around turned but trying to aim and how the reticle lined up with the break in the center with separate images for each eye literally broke aiming.

Plus like Climber pointed out there's like nothing you can really do with it now.

Plus this is nothing new. The technology just isn't there guys. Sega, Sony, and other companies have blown hundreds of thousands on this concept since before the days of the Genesis/Megadrive.

Before this is feasible someone needs to make a HD monitor, shrink it to cell phone size so it doesn't way a shit ton when you strap it to your head, and then come up with a controller where you don't need your peripheral vision to help make precise movements.

>>57143Uh, I have a DK2, it's not even a pound, the CV1 and the Vive both have better head mounts.
The screen resolution on the CV1 is 1080x1200 per eye.
They are both using a hybrid Fresnel lens to keep the distance from screen to eye lower.
The CV1 uses the same constellation of IR LEDs tracked by a camera as the DK2, which works great over a reasonable range.
The Oculus Touch will use IR LEDs like it's headset, but we won't know how exactly it will be set up yet.
The Vive uses the lighthouse system, which works fantastically over a wide area.
The Vive handsets are using lighthouse as well and with the new ergonomic improvements give very good feedback on hand shape as well as position.

The two big improvements that make this work now are screens and the realization about single stage lenses with a prewarped image.
We could have done most everything else years ago, really we could have done the lenses years ago if someone had thought of it, the screen tech is the one thing that really came into its own recently with the low persistence high resolution screens that were pushed by the smartphones.
Though if Kodak had pushed OLED tech back in the 90s instead of sitting on it maybe we would have had things sooner.

>>57144Uh I just played on my friend's development kit before I made the post.
It's definitely more than a pound. I was being a little factitious saying it weighed 5, but it's certainly heavy enough to pull the straps when you turn your head to face directions.
It doesn't stay in place very well, especially trying to turn your head at speed, you know like they'd want you to do if you were playing a game and making use of their gimmick controls...

Turning is neither intuitive or very controllable.

We've had the ability to make optical headsets and systems capable of Battlezone and early Nintendo-type graphics for decades, close to 40 years now. VR games aren't anything new. Shattered Steel, a Bioware PC game from 1996, offered support for like 4 or 5 different VR headsets. The US government actually tried to work with Atari to make a Bradley trainer when Battlezone came out.

Seeing how shit the Wii controls, Playstation Eye, and XBONE motion sense crap is, and actually playing the Oculus Rift, mere hours ago, it's not a stretch at all to say that yes, this thing is not and will not equate to a tight, fluid gaming experience especially compared to the existing controller and keyboard-mouse, which are far cheaper. And seeing as this costs $600, I don't think they're cheaping out to the lowest possible point on the motion sensors and shit. Not to mention the rest of the industry seems to be pushing the opposite direction, going to 4k display and beyond, etc.

This is akin to people who tell you "you can replace your PC with an iPad." Maybe, if all you do is get on facebook or tumblr to look at cat pictures. Otherwise, no, not really.

>>57145Yes the DK2 has a bit of a problem with it's relatively weak strap at 440g(0.97lbs), but the CV1 has better straps and a lower weight.

The motion sensing on the DK2 is within a relatively small frustum and only to about 90 degrees to each side, but the CV1 expands that considerably and gives full 360 tracking on the headset.

I'm familiar with older VR stuff I worked in a lab with a CAVE system.

None of those motion sensing systems really compare as they were all designed around different tech than Oculus and Valve are using. The CAVE system's old IR joystick is more comparable and was better than the Wiimote years before the Wii came out.

You aren't going to be playing the same styles of games directly in VR except for maybe platforming games where you act as the camera not the player. Elite:Dangerous has already shown that for some types of games where you are inherently seated in the game, VR is vastly superior.

The CV1 has 1.25 times the number of pixels as the DK2, the difficulty in reading text in the DK2 is not going to be as big of a problem with the CV1(it's still an area that needs improvement) and when you can move your head around to see more things you don't need a 3 monitor setup to see in your peripheral.

FOV is still not good enough, but that's something that will get there with time.

The tech is there, it's just not there for cheap and it will need to get a bit better before it's the inherently better way of doing everything, when it is the best way to experience everything we can still experience old games with virtual monitors.

I got to play with the samsung VR gear around christmas for a bit and it really got my pretty excited about all this VR business. Mostly in what is coming.

I had to really talk myself out of putting together a new desktop and grabbing up an oculus rift. I'll save my shekels for now, but i'm really excited for what is going to be available in as little as 2-3 years.

Yeah, definitely gonna wait for a year or so until both the price comes down, the market of available games goes up, and its competitors are released as well so I can see fair comparisons instead of pure speculation. Really don't see any advantage to buying into this so early.

That system requirement tool seems like horseshit too. Says an i7 3770 doesn't meet the minimum despite it shitting on an i5 4590 (the stated minimum), even without hyper-threading (which I somehow doubt Oculus would support, even though it should, if it's performance-heavy enough to be demanding i5s as minimum spec). Apparently 100Mhz faster standard/200Mhz faster turbo and 2MB larger L3 cache equals "worse".

Also it's giving me some nondescript error that apparently my USB 3.0 ports aren't "compatible", whatever the fuck that means. I've got like 10 of them and I know they work. But I'm not putting too much stock in that, considering how wrong it was about the processor.

>>57153The processor bit I don't know, but on the USB I suspect it's the USB bus itself, they could be more clear, but there are latency issues with certain manufacturers, it's one of the big things that has come up since the DK2 came out, some people just get awful latency despite having a good computer and it ends up being the USB bus on the motherboard.

Well the game got taken over by Gamers First which was always notorious for absolutely destroying valid attempts at alternative MMOs by throwing game balance in the trash and shoving pay2win cash shops on the community.

IIRC they did the same thing to a formerly awesome attempt at a post-apocalyptic MMO called Fallen Earth, I played it for a short while and it had some good concepts and the world was fun to explore, but it had a skeleton dev team and financial troubles keeping the game afloat. Last I heard it Gamers First took a giant shit all over it.

Also back when I tried APB for about the third time, it was right after Gamers First had taken it over, they did a few large waves of perma bans trying to target hackers and they nailed a fuckload of completely random, innocent players with false positives related to music players, Steam and instant messengers. They even admitted to the false positives but wouldn't release their numerical estimate on how many people were affected...plus they refused to unban anyone for it because they claimed they couldn't be sure if they were unbanning a 'real' cheater.

Damn fuck that company, APB had so much potential at one point in history.

>>57165>IIRC they did the same thing to a formerly awesome attempt at a post-apocalyptic MMO called Fallen Earth, I played it for a short while and it had some good concepts and the world was fun to explore, but it had a skeleton dev team and financial troubles keeping the game afloat. Last I heard it Gamers First took a giant shit all over it.
I loved fallen earth. Like.. A lot.

But the population never really hit where it needed to be, then as you said, they took over.

I'm seeing more and more on the HTC Vive and there's another one that's a bit more independent that's gaining some traction. The technology seems to be moving at a pretty brisk pace, more so than I had thought. I'm really excited to see this shit take off throughout 2016-17.

Ah fuck, I loved me some DAoC back in the day. Shame Warhammer Online failed to survive and truly replace it.

I also went through stints in Shadowbane, Darkfall, Mortal, etc. It's always so disappointing to see these ambitious MMOs fail so hard though, mainly because the MMO market at large is always afraid of games based on open world PvP and PKing. I am the opposite and I never understood why the PvE and raiding concepts were so popular, because that shit is boring as fuck to me. I mean I can dig some PvE and questing, as long as it isn't "bring me 5 pig snouts" type shit, but an MMO is absolutely boring if I have no constant risk of PvP in the open world.

I grew up playing Ultima Online back when there weren't many other options for MMOs, it was always exciting with the kill or be killed mentality in your head anytime you left a town, meeting random players out in the wild and wondering if you should gank them to protect yourself or if you should trust them uneasily in your presence. Even with the roving squads of PKers, the community politics balanced everything out with the bounty system and people who were genuinely good at PvP, but not griefers, being around to fight back. Everything feels so much more important when you know you can die and have your inventory fully looted at any given moment.

I guess my main issue is just that MMOs are always so controlled and on-rails these days, I just like the concept of every player having nearly absolute freedom to do what they want.

>>57182>Warhammer
Totally. It had promise starting out, but they missed out on a LOT of opportunities with it and played it safe.

>I also went through stints in Shadowbane, Darkfall, Mortal, etc. It's always so disappointing to see these ambitious MMOs fail so hard though, mainly because the MMO market at large is always afraid of games based on open world PvP and PKing
Agreed, I am a big fan of Shadowbane, Darkfall, and mortal as well. But you are correct, a lot of developers are afraid to take risks and they really really need to start. Because we need to shake off the comfort of WoW clones.

>I guess my main issue is just that MMOs are always so controlled and on-rails these days, I just like the concept of every player having nearly absolute freedom to do what they want.
My thoughts exactly. Theres a new one coming out tht might be right up your alley called "The Repopulation" or something to that effect. Its basically Fallen Earth + SWG pre CU on an alien planet.

Also Camelot Unchained is coming along nicely (Im in the Alpha).

Check out the classes (as they have been revealed. Some are really fucking cool (Im looking at you Black Rider).

>>57182Right. That's why I never got into WoW much or anything either. There's really no "game" to it. If you die you go get your body and your stuff is a little damaged. Hurt your pocketbook, which is directly influenced by how much you play. Everything about it was designed to be a time sink to keep you wrapped up and paying the subscription fee.
Tried the same stuff with Diablow 3 and it sucked. I'm not sure if Blizzard has the talent left who knows how to make a good non-MMO type game. Their Heroes of the Storm team actually got laid off after it went "gold" I guess, cuz they expected it to die off in short order.